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Sunday, January 19, 2014

Beetroot Brownies

Roasted beetroot salad with pine nuts & edible winter blooms

With beetroots in season I have been incorporating them in several dishes. My favourite happens to be the roasted salad with a light dressing of olive oil, pepper, and salt. With nasturtiums blooming now I often add the leaves and the blooms but in this picture I've also added pea tendrils and blooms. It is known that the more vibrant the colours are of fruits and vegetables the more they offer in the form of nutrients. And having such a "good-looking" dish is indeed a feel-good factor.

Although I had read about beetroots in cakes I had never tried out any recipe. But the December issue of Good Food had loads of recipes with this veggie and the pictures were out of this world. So the other day I made brownies with 500 grams of beetroots and some dark chocolate. They turned out to be moist and absolutely delicious! I did make some adaptations by cutting down on the sugar. The recipe from the magazine is given below.

The icing was a little runny but tasted so good!

beetroot 500g, washedrapeseed oil 100mldark chocolate 250g, chopped (I used Morde)eggs 3 largegolden caster sugar 200g (I used only 100g of regular ground sugar)vanilla extract 2 tspplain flour 140gcocoa powder 75gbaking powder 1tspwalnuts 50g, roughly choppedThe Icingicing sugar 100g (I used less)beetroot juice 1 tbsp~Heat the oven to 180C. Grease and line a 20x30cm cake tin with baking parchment. Boil the beetroots in a pan of boiling salted water for 15-20 minutes or until tender. Drain and leave to cool before peeling.~ Chop one-third of the cooked beetroots into small cubes and blitz the remainder to a paste in a sieve over a bowl to collect 1-2 tbsp juice. Save this for the icing, and mix the oil into the puree.~Melt the chocolate slowly in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water and leave to cool slightly. Use an electric whisk to beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla together in a large mixing bowl until light, fluffy and tripled in size. Carefully fold the eggs into the beetroot mixture, followed by the melted chocolate. Fold in the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder, then add walnuts and the chopped beetroot.~Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 20-25 minutes. The brownies should still be slightly gooey in the middle. Allow to cool. Mix enough reserved beetroot juice with the icing sugar to get a runny icing. Remove brownies from the tin, drizzle with the icing and cut into squares.

I used butter instead of rapeseed oil and apart from cutting down on the sugar there were no changes made. Everyone who tasted these brownies said that they were the best!:)Thank you for stopping by today.Hope you check out my Facebook page and like it as well!